November 01, 2010

Two Big Winners & Brand New Tutorial!

We have a couple of announcements to make this fine Monday before moving forward with today's tutorial from Michelle Lanning. You may have noticed that as of last week, we had two giveaways going at the same time! The first being Thursday's Creative Journaling giveaway and the second, Jenni Bowlin's October kit! Well, the both are patiently awaiting winners and guess what?! We finally have names to share and two very lucky folks are about to receive fantastic prizes today! Let us spell them out below:

Creative Journaling Contest Winner:

Put a brad through the corner of the journalling sheet & attach it to the back of the layout so it swivels out to read from behind the page - that way you can write A LOT as I always have too much to say...

I definitely wanna lift the layout with the banners by Michelle McCord. I love the use of all the lil phrase and journaling stickers across the page. My kids school colors are green and gold and this kit would work perfectly with a BUNCH of stuff I have to scrap for them.

A huge congratulations girls!! Please send us your shipping info at info@cratepaper.com so that we can arrange to have your packages shipped! And thank-you to all our blog readers whom commented with their great ideas and project favorites! If you haven't had a chance to read some of the journaling tidbits listed in response to last Thursday post, check them out before you leave - considering that journaling can often be tedious, space consuming task, it's inevitable that at some point or another you'll be faced with a complex journaling fiasco! Many of the comments posted are especially helpful in dealing with this problem - print them out and post them on your inspiration board for quick reference or tuck them away in a folder for one of them "just-in-case" moments! You never know when a story might be too big for a layout!

Moving on to Michelle's tutorial...

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Hello there! Michelle Lanning here to share with you a little bit of a behind-the-scenes look at a section of one of my layouts for Crate Paper. First, lets take a peek at the layout:

I'm going to show you how I put together the vertical strip that accents the background of my layout. Here's what you'll need for the task at hand: Restoration Pattern Paper, Adhesive, Punches (any you prefer) - I used a label punch and a circle punch.

When I first start a layout, I chose my colors/patterns according to the them I want to convey. I loved the look of the Heirloom paper because it reminds me of vintage kitchen wallpaper. I thought it would go well with my layout's theme - "Ice Cream". To break up the blues, I decided to bring in Lace paper because of it's vibrant yellow hue! I then brought out my punches and started punching! I punched shapes from a variety of Restoration papers and Kraft cardstock.

After I punched out all the tags and circles, I inked their edges "brown" with Colorbox Pigment ink. *Hint: Petite ink pads come in extra handy for distressing and on top of this, they're also extremely economical! Find them just about anywhere...

Next, I cut all the punched shapes in half, though not equally. This was done intentionally so that the punched shapes would be of varying widths.

To adhere the punched shapes as shown, I simply flipped the pattern paper over and added a strip of glue to it's edges. From there, I randomly placed each of the punched shapes, making sure to overlap them while moving down the paper.

Here is the finished pattern piece after the punches are fully in order. I then simply adhered it to my layout as shown.

This is a really simply, but fun way to add layers to your layout! Thanks so much for stopping by today - it's been a pleasure!